Week 5: A Contract with God


A Contract with God by Will Eisner is visually stunning with flowing line-art and beautiful caricatures. Eisner commands the pen and, by extension, the reader. His work relies entirely on hand-drawn lines, there is no half-tone present but instead, Eisner utilizes cross-hatching techniques. Figures are much looser and livelier than in the comic books that were popularized at the time.
            I am painfully aware that I come at most of my readings from a feminist point of view. While I try not to make that my only form of critique since I don’t go through the rest of my life pointing out inequalities, I would like to write about something that I have very passionate feelings about in regards to Chapter 3: The Super.
            I am very adamantly against the sexualization of underage persons in real life as well as art. That being said, I do not take issue with depicting tough issues like pedophilia in graphic novels. I do take issue, however, with how Eisner chooses to depict the little girl in this story. The girl is drawn with the facial structure of a twenty-something-year-old woman and acts like a seductress even though she’s around twelve years old. Further, the super himself is portrayed as a pseudo-victim. Okay, sure the kid poisoned his dog and stole his money box and of course, she shouldn’t have done that, but that doesn’t justify trying to beat her and definitely doesn’t validate his earlier action of sexually soliciting her, even if he is "lonely".
            This isn’t even the only example in the book of a minor in a sexual situation: in Chapter 4, a married woman cheats on her husband with a fifteen-year-old. Granted, he only told her that after, but it’s implied that she had a feeling he wasn’t over eighteen and offers to keep seeing him. Then she gets caught by her husband and has sex/gets raped by him in front of the minor.
            Again, I don’t think there’s anything wrong with putting adult situations in media, but my problem lies with the portrayal. While this is for an older audience, works of fiction are meant to teach, and A Contract with God does not explicitly discourage this behavior. In the case of the Super, you’re meant to sympathize on some level with him because no one likes him because he’s a sour landlord, but he’s lonely and only has his dog, who he sobs and kills himself over when he’s poisoned. Unfortunately for Eisner, I don’t sympathize with pedophiles.

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